


you've got a way with words, you got away with murder

by passeridae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Post-Overwatch Recall, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:28:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28046955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/passeridae/pseuds/passeridae
Summary: Everything is still, sharp, the whipcrack moment as adrenaline is dumped in your veins and time slows down. The smell of antiseptic is strong in his nose, and he almost wants Jesse to start smoking one of his horrible cigarillos to clear the air. The sheets are washed-sharp under his back. He wants to scratch his left knee. He catalogues these facts, notes that there are no windows, that Jesse is between him and the door. He could take Jesse under normal conditions, but feeling as drugged as he does now he’s unsure if the probability is high enough for his liking.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Kudos: 17





	you've got a way with words, you got away with murder

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts folder for Approximately Forever, and I finally got the momentum to finish it. Enjoy a taste of Ponderous Dae, as they Used To Be.

Gabriel gasps to awakeness like he’s rising out of water. He feels heavy, leaden, his muscles liquefied under skin. Situation assessment: he’s strapped to a bed. The room is white, smells sterile. A medical ward of some kind. He’s hooked up to various machines. McCree is sitting on a chair near the bed. 

That last fact hits him like a punch to the guts. The last time he’d seen McCree in the flesh had been before Zurich. Before all this. McCree is pacing his breathing the way Gabriel taught him. Anxiety, perhaps. Some form of autonomic arousal at the very least. His gaze is fixed on Gabriel. There is nobody else in the room, other than the soft beep of medical instruments. Gabriel doesn’t want to admit it, but McCree being here is… startling. He can’t recall precisely the events leading to him being here, but kidnapping was never McCree’s forte. Nor his preference.

Everything is still, sharp, the whipcrack moment as adrenaline is dumped in your veins and time slows down. The smell of antiseptic is strong in his nose, and he almost wants Jesse to start smoking one of his horrible cigarillos to clear the air. The sheets are washed-sharp under his back. He wants to scratch his left knee. He catalogues these facts, notes that there are no windows, that Jesse is between him and the door. He could take Jesse under normal conditions, but feeling as drugged as he does now he’s unsure if the probability is high enough for his liking.

There’s no way that McCree hasn’t noticed he’s awake, but he’s still as stone. If it wasn’t for his breathing, the soft puffs of warmer air across his bare chest, Gabriel would hardly be sure he was there at all. After a small eternity, where Gabriel makes and then discards three separate plans of action, McCree sighs. At Gabriel’s stony expression, his stillness, who knows. "Doctors orders, Gabe. Someone has to be with you at all times until we've fixed whatever’s wrong with you." 

It would be a non-sequitur if McCree didn’t know Gabriel so well. First: McCree wasn’t acting on his own. Second: there was a doctor involved, likely an organisation of some description. Third: they want to fix him. Didn’t everyone. Pieces were slotting into place, even as his brain strained and struggled to start up after whatever was done to him.

In lieu of a response to McCree’s statement, he shakes the restraints holding him to the bed. McCree sees the deflection for what it is, takes it anyways. "You can't break them, they’re calibrated special, and besides, they're hardly the only thing keeping you here. You know the drill." 

"I wrote the drill."

"Yeah, we did." McCree tilts his chin up, a gesture of defiance. The muscles of his throat tense like he’s expecting a punch. Gabriel stares, implacable. They had indeed, the two of them. Heads together, breathing in each others’ air. Wrapped around each other, in all the ways that mattered.

The silence sits, gravid in the air. Information clicks into place, crystalline, and Gabriel can feel the leaden sensation for what it is now — gravity fields dampening his movement, preventing him from using his powers in addition to slowing him down. It smacks of Angela’s involvement, which doesn’t come as a surprise. She’d always been an adamant optimist, even in the face of reality. Combine Angela’s involvement with McCree’s presence, and he can make an educated guess at who has him.

"How much do they know then?" McCree’s eyes flick up to his, and his mouth tightens. Surely he should have known that Gabriel could make this deduction. He was taught better than that. Gabriel taught him better than that, forged him into something honed and perfect.

McCree’s gaze slides to Gabriel’s jaw, capitulating. "I haven't told them anything, and they haven't pried."

Despite himself, Gabriel smiles at this declaration. Pleased. "Hn, at least your loyalties are still in the right place." If he had a free hand, he’d touch McCree, reaffirm the message. Reaffirm that his loyalty has remained just where it should be. The boy had always responded best to touch, starved for it as he was. Gabriel keeps his gaze fixed on Jesse, sees the moment he falls back into an old hurt — curling in on himself, as if to shrink in size, shoulders rounding, eyes vanishing behind the brim of his hat. 

When he speaks, his voice is quiet. Intimate. Layered in a bone-deep ache that makes his voice crack. "Not like I have much of a choice in the matter. You took me as a kid and broke me and moulded me in your image.” McCree exhales noisily, “you should never have had me in the first place." 

It’s an old accusation. Not from McCree, originally, but picked up from Amari who had always thought Jesse belonged somewhere softer. Somewhere he could be smothered to death, presumably, by bureaucracy and regulation. Gabriel hates that Amari managed to plant this seed of doubt and water it into something thorny and sharp, all these years later. It makes him sharp. Perhaps sharper than he should be.

"I'm not going to apologise for my greatest creation, McCree." 

McCree is already shaking his head, refusing to believe. Barrelling on. "All this shit you've done as Reaper, it's the same shit you wanted to do as Gabe, and Angie and these kids that make up this new Overwatch, they think they're fixing you, but they're not. You've always been this. You've always been who you are." He's standing now, breathing heavily, leaning towards Gabriel like it'll make him listen. His fists are clenched tight around the metal side rail of the bed, skin whitening. The muscles of his forearms are shaking.

Gabriel meets his gaze, holds it steady. "That's right Jesse. And you've always been my perfect second in command."

McCree rears back as though he's been slapped. For a moment, Gabriel almost thinks he’s going to cry — his eyes are glassy enough for it. His breathing is short and sharp before it slows into the pattern Gabriel taught him again. He’s trying to calm himself down. Cute.

“When they asked you about it, you denied it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here with me. But you remember all of it, don’t you.” It isn’t a question. Gabriel knows Jesse remembers every moment of Blackwatch. Every touch, every kiss, every execution he’d done in Gabriel’s name. “Even now, you’re the one sitting at my bedside like a worried nurse.”

McCree starts pacing, no longer able to keep himself still. His words are short and sharp, like they’re being beaten from him. Like Gabriel is there choking the breath from his lungs. “It doesn’t matter what I do, you’re etched down to my bones. I can’t get you out.”

“Of course not. This is how things should be.”

McCree flinches, eyes flickering to the wall like he’s thinking about punching it. He doesn’t, but Gabriel suspects that it’s a near thing. His eyes flick back to Gabriel, bound and still on the bed, then he hisses. All the fight draining out of him. “Maybe so. Don’t have to like it though.”

“I never asked you to.”

They sit in silence — McCree closes his eyes, though he doesn’t sleep. His breath too light, posture too tight for that. Gabriel waits, patient. He has time, and McCree will buckle in the end. It’s only a matter of waiting.


End file.
